The post Risking the Agony of Defeat appeared first on Changing the Game Project.

(This blog is contributed by our great friend Mackenzie (St. Onge) Morse. Mac was a collegiate hockey player and rugby player at Dartmouth, our intern at our first Way of Champions Coaching Conference, and then spent 4 years with the US Ski and Snowboard Team in an athlete support role. Today she is the Athlete Outreach and Engagement Manager for the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, helping athletes before, during and in the difficult transition time at the end of their athletic careers. She is also married to US World Cup skier Sam Morse, supporting him everyday on his journey to the podium.)

Something I know to be true? The journey of elite athletes isn’t always the fairytale we see it sold as.

It is so much more nuanced, more robust, and frankly, more interesting than that.

So here are ten, lesser publicized, things I have come to know to be true about being an elite athlete, gleaned from over a decade in my own athletic career, nine years of personal and academic inquiry on athlete development, and seven years of working in the Olympic and Paralympic movement.

1. The journey always starts with love. Love for a person, a place, a team, an experience or a feeling – love is the spark igniting the fire that fuels the years to come.

2. The world makes it out to be much more glamorous than it is. When the medals are awarded it is easy to forget that a life spent in a singular pursuit of greatness means deep and personal sacrifice.

3. It can be lonely. Our society loves athletes, or maybe the idea of them, but few people really ‘get’ the experience in a way that can be meaningfully shared.

4. It’s a lot of work. It comes with late nights, early mornings, long days and longer weeks, training blocks, rehab, fourth quarter sprints… and all that again plus overtime.
5. It costs a lot of money. Sure some athletes make it back, but the business of sport is not a democracy.

6. It is a foundational experience. Competing at that level will shape the rest of that athlete’s life, for better or for worse, in both big and small ways.

7. There is heartbreak.

8. There is pure blissful joy.

9. There is a cliff. At the end of it all, there is a cliff that every athlete looks out over the edge of. When the end of their competitive days come, they stand at the verge of reckoning no matter who they are or what they accomplished. They toe the line, some with the protective parachute of a life lived in parallel to their playing days; others with nothing but their dry fit t-shirts and a sinking realization that even superheroes hang up the cape. Every athlete, ready or not, has to take the next step, has to jump, hoping to find themselves in the fall…

It’s never clear at the start, to see where they’ll land.

But the tenth thing that I know to be true about being an elite athlete – is that there is life after!

The post 10 Things I Know About Being an Elite Athlete appeared first on Changing the Game Project.

Two weeks ago, my son TJ’s (#9 above with his senior teammates) high school soccer career came to an end in a state playoff game, culminating a week of highs and lows for me, of beginnings and endings, of joy and pain. All of those things come together in high school sports and that’s why I love them. And sometimes hate them, but mostly love them.

First, there were the happy parts. My son was a senior captain, and had a great final season. He experienced many leadership challenges, a new coach and style of play, and all the inevitable ups and downs that high school teams have. They went into their final regular season game needing to win to advance to the state playoffs. They found themselves down 2-0 with 10 minutes to go in the game. And then, the miraculous come back. They scored three goals in seven minutes to beat a rival school on their home field to clinch a playoff birth. It was the highest of the highs and a memory my son will cherish forever.

Five days later, he experienced the lowest of the lows, as his team was beaten 3-0 in the first round of the state playoffs. As the last seconds ticked off the clock, you could see the finality set in. When the game ended, I met him on the field and watched the tears stream down his face. “I just can’t believe that 12 years of soccer has now come to an end,” he said choking up. I looked around at the lifelong friends that he had played with since he was in elementary school, and I thought of all the hours that he spent on the field mastering his craft. I had my own tears as I thought of all the special moments I got to experience with him as his coach and his dad. I thought of the goals and assists, and also the disappointments. I thought of tearful car rides and joyous celebrations. I thought of time spent in the backyard, just him and I and a soccer ball, and I thought of times spent, sadly, in the ER and the doctors office as he worked through various injuries. I wish he had just one more year as he has grown into a fine player and a strong young man. Heck, I wish I could watch just one more game. But as I left the field, I watched him surrounded by his teammates and his friends who had made the 3 hour drive to come watch the playoff game. I thought to myself, that’s what it’s all about. That’s why I love school sports.

That week I watched two additional games. TJ and I went to see another local high school play in the state semifinal game. 10 of his teammates from club soccer, kids that I had coached since they were 12, were on that team, and we watched their joy and fantastic play as they advanced to another state final. I could see some sadness in my sons eyes that he wasn’t out there playing with them, but also excitement for his friends. I saw the joy of their parents and their immense pride in their boys and that put a huge smile on my face. I shared hugs with lifelong friends that I have made through my son and through coaching, and cherished their overwhelming gratitude for all the hours I spent with them as a coach.

My final game of the week was the girls state semifinal, contested between two high schools from our hometown. My daughter, now a college freshman, was the captain of Bend HS last year, and has stayed connected with the team all season long. When they scored to take a 2-1 lead with five minutes to go, I FaceTimed my daughter who angrily informed me that she was studying for a midterm. Together, we watched the final minutes tick away and watched her former teammates advance to the state final. We watched their joyous celebration, and we watched the student section storm the field, and sing the Bend High fight song at the top of their lungs. I turned to my friends in the stands and said “this is why you play high school sports.”

As I left the stadium, I shared hugs with joyous parents who were thrilled their daughters were off to the state final. I shared hugs with players who couldn’t wait to text my daughter. I shared a warm embrace with her former high school coach, Scott, who was an incredible positive influence in her life. He makes all his players feel respected, important, validated, empowered and relevant. This is why I put my kids in sports.

Alas, also on the way out I shared hugs with tearful players and parents from the opposing team. These are also kids I have known since they were very young. I’ve spent countless hours on the field coaching them and developing friendships with their parents as well. As I saw the finality in their eyes as the seniors walked off their high school field for the last time, my heart was broken for them as much as it overflowed with joy for their opponents. I looked into the eyes of their parents as well, and felt their pain watching their daughter’s experience the devastating finality of the result.

And when you put all of this together, that is why I love high school sports. This is why I love sports in general. Because it teaches you so many valuable lessons, especially the one that says you have to be courageous enough to experience the lowest of lows, and have your heart ripped out in the cruelest of fashion. Because if you are that courageous, then you create the opportunity to stand on the other side of that field and experience the greatest joy you can ever experience, the thrill of victory, surrounded by your closest friends and classmates, wearing the colors and the badge of your school, totally exhausted and physically and emotionally spent. And you just want to grab those kids and tell them “savor this” because you’ll be searching for this feeling the rest of your life. And when you do experience that, you learn that the pain, the suffering, the disappointment and the tears were all worth it.

That is why I’m so glad my children played high school sports. That is why I’m so glad they didn’t leave for club sports that discouraged them from representing their school and playing in front of their friends. And that is why while sad that it is over, I hope and pray that those moments of joy and high achievement, as well as the pain and suffering, stick with them forever, and have taught them that there is no straight path to the top. The only path is, as Theodore Roosevelt said, for those who dare greatly, who know in the end, high achievement, and if they fail, at least, their place is not among those timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

I hope you have the same love affair someday watching your kids play high school sports as I have had. I hope you have lots of miles in the car, lots of cold bleachers and frostbitten fingertips, lots of smiles, and lots of tears. Because they all contribute to your kids becoming young adults right before your eyes. And man does it go by quickly. So enjoy these moments, because they are worth more than you will ever know. And when they are over, you’ll think back to all those moments that you lost sleep over, that you sweated over the small things that didn’t really matter, that you worried about wins and losses and positions and playing time. All that stress and anxiety will fade away, all that will be left is this overwhelming feeling that you wish you could do it all over again.

The post Why I Love High School Sports appeared first on Changing the Game Project.

To mark the release of our brand new book The Champion Sports Parent: Practical Wisdom for Raising Confident, Competitive, Mentally Tough Athletes, we wanted to offer our readers a sneak peak of the book introduction. Please enjoy, and if you are inspired, PLEASE CLICK HERE TO GRAB A COPY from Amazon or CLICK HERE FOR A SIGNED AUTHOR COPY

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If you want to help your children to succeed in sports or anything else for that matter, offer support, love, and perhaps more than anything, the space to experience and learn on their own. Maybe by sitting back, enjoying the game, observing your kids in action, you can help them learn
the game faster and enjoy it more. Just a thought.

—Steve Kerr, head coach, Golden State Warriors

A few years back, John was enjoying a game of golf in his hometown of Bend, Oregon, and was paired with a father and son for his round. The boy was about 14, and he could hit a ball really well. Long, nice draw, great iron play, and pretty good around the green.The kid was a solid 14-year-old golfer.

Hole after hole they played, and the boy was scoring much better than his dad and John, despite the coaching his father was constantly giving him.

“Keep your head down,” after an errant drive.

“You were supposed to be right of the flag there—come on, son,” as the boy hit his approach shot to the wrong part of the green.

“Stay focused!” after the boy misread a putt.

“He’s pretty good,” said John after the boy smashed another drive down the middle of the fairway.

“We’re thinking of packing up and moving cross-country to Florida where he can play more golf,” the dad said proudly.“ It’s going to be hard to sell our house, and hopefully I can get a new job; otherwise his mom and I will take turns with him down there while the other one stays here with his siblings. But those are the sacrifices you make when your kid has PGA Tour potential.”

“PGA Tour potential?” said John, his eyes a little wider at this point. “You’re picking up and moving your whole life and family for your son’s golf at age 14?”

“Yeah, I know it sounds nuts,” said the father a little sheepishly. “But everyone says if we don’t do this now and get him more golf and better coaching, he’s going to miss his window.”

There were a million and one thoughts racing through John’s mind at that point—namely that there were a lot of great golf courses and golf teachers in Bend, that children only get one childhood, and that parents spend 90 percent of their lifetime of hours with their children prior to their 18th birthday, so why give that up? As an author and professional speaker who travels the globe speaking about youth sports, coaching and parenting young athletes, John also knows quite a few top golf coaches, and they will all tell you that players with pretty swings and solid ball striking are a dime a dozen—it takes a lot more than that to make it on tour. John also knew that parents living vicariously through their son’s sports often spoil the child’s love of sport. There were a lot of things John wanted to say, but the only words that came out were “I wish him luck. He seems like a nice kid.”

This is youth sports 2024. It’s far too often an over-commercialized, adult-centric enterprise with children and parents trying to keep up with the Joneses, afraid to miss out, many times sacrificing the child’s physical health and mental well-being in pursuit of some far-fetched future goal at the behest of coaches and sports organizations charging thousands of dollars for selling the dream. Author Michael Lewis compared the business of youth sports to the market for addictive drugs: unregulated, fueled by money, and populated by desperate actors. It is often a race to nowhere with both children and parents, in the end, broken-down, beaten, and wondering, Why did we do that?

Youth sports is big business. In 2019, the youth sports industry was valued at $19.2 billion, an increase of more than 90 percent from 2010 and over $4 billion more valuable than the NFL. Local sports have disappeared and been replaced by travel leagues and extensive sports tourism. A 2019 Harris Poll of 1,001 adults with children in private sports clubs found that 27 percent paid more than $500 per month on their children’s sports. Eight percent paid over $12,000 per year. And sadly, 36 percent of these families took less family vacations, and nearly 20 percent added a second job to help pay the expenses. The sports industrial complex is bleeding families dry, and excluding many other kids who cannot afford to even play.2

Perhaps author Linda Flanagan says it best in her wonderful book Take Back The Game. “Thanks to the extravagant investment in kids sports, parents’ Olympian commitment to their children’s recreation, and the exalted role of athletics in higher education,” she writes,“ much of what we love about youth sports – and why we want our children to play –, has been eroded.” We must do better.

We could go on and on about today’s youth sports environment, but that is not the purpose of this book. The purpose of this book is to help you, the reader, be the best possible sports parent you can be. Why did we need to write a book?

Because it’s hard to be the parent of a young athlete in the 21st century. Harder than it has ever been, and certainly harder than it was when we were growing up. You will never get it all right, and you will often screw it up. We know this firsthand.

Jerry’s youngest son, Brennan, was a top distance runner in the state of California. He came within three seconds of being the state cross country champion and received a scholarship to one of the top running schools in the country, the University of Colorado. Being an accomplished runner himself, Jerry saw how his son was living the dream he never got to experience as a collegiate athlete. He started to live his life, unintentionally, through Brennan’s successes and became quite overzealous in the process, much to his embarrassment—and his son’s as well. At the time, Jerry, a practicing sport psychologist with 30 years’ experience, was looking for purpose and meaning in his athletic life, and Brennan’s journey fulfilled what he had hoped to be in college.

One day, as Jerry yelled and screamed instructions from the side of the race course, Brennan stopped running, turned around, and told his dad to zip it. Jerry was mortified as he realized what had been happening—that he had made his son’s journey his own. As Jerry says today, “I’m happy to say I am still a bit embarrassed by this, but I’m thrilled that I woke up and learned my lesson that I needed to find my own purpose and simply support him from a distance.”

John, too, has had numerous instances of far-from-perfect sports parenting. One in particular he shared in his 2014 TEDx Talk, “Changing the Game in Youth Sports.” When his son TJ was only five years old and playing his first soccer game, John was his coach. He was so proud and excited that his son was going to play the sport he loved so much and had made a life out of coaching. Come game time, though, TJ turned to his dad and said, “I don’t want to play.” John was mortified, embarrassed, and a tad angry. TJ, on the other hand, was perfectly happy, for he had found a lizard on the side of the field to play with. As they got into the car post-game, John couldn’t help himself, in spite of all the advice he gave to others through his work. “So TJ . . .” he began, before his wife poked him from the passenger seat.

“Really,” she admonished him, “you are going to give him a lecture on the ride home about not playing today? Didn’t you write a book about this already?”

We all can lose it from time to time with only the best intentions of helping our children. This book is not about perfect parenting. It’s about, as Steve Kerr says in the opening quote, offering them love and support in a fun, joyful environment and the space to learn on their own. Our job is to nudge and encourage forward movement and then get out of the way.

Being a sports parent is an art—a dance—yet it is difficult. Perhaps that’s a massive understatement. It can often be demanding, burden- some, and at times, may seem like a horrendous nightmare. Once your children’s lives become involved with sports, your own life takes a huge turn, one that often approaches chaos. Getting kids to and from practice demands proficiency in a new profession, one of being a full-time, on-demand chauffeur. Then there are the out-of-town travel events that decimate your weekends. There is the enormous cost of the more competitive teams. Arranging for individual coaching sessions, treating injuries, fundraising, and working the snack bar with all the unhealthy food becomes anathema to your sanity.

However, you must not forget that this sacred journey can also be the most rewarding period of your life. Writing this book is our attempt to set the stage for making this time in your life an extraordinary experience. Our deepest intention is to provide a useful, easy-to- read, practical manual that will help you to 1) implement a more aware, conscious level of parenting as well as 2) guiding you to raise true champions capable of being the best version of themselves by learning invaluable lessons—not only about sports but about life as well.

So why are we the right people to write this book? From the high performance and consulting side of things, we are proud to have been intimately connected with building and sustaining more than 100 world, national, and conference championship cultures. These include NCAA programs at Stanford, Ohio State, Harvard, UConn, Georgetown, Iowa, Syracuse, Maryland, Duke, North Carolina, Rutgers, Middlebury, Amherst, Colby, and the US Naval Academy, as well as our professional sports involvement with coaches and athletes in the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLS, NLL, and PGA Tour. Fifty-five of our teams have made it to an NCAA Final Four. Numerous teams in Olympic sports and high school and club levels of athletics have experienced the power of our culture, performance, and leadership approach as well.

But perhaps more importantly, we are parents. We have seen our children enjoy the highest of highs and lowest of lows on their sporting journey. Jerry has four kids in their thirties, while John’s oldest is now in college and his youngest is a senior in high school. We have seen the youth sports journey to its conclusion, spending nights in the ER and long days in the car traveling to and from games. We have watched our children get injured, beaten down, humiliated, and more. We have watched them cry after great disappointments and make life- long friends through sports. And while we realize that our children are not your children and our experiences are not your experiences, the principles and ideas in this book are ones we have researched, written about, and used with other people’s children. Through trial and error, we’ve found what worked for our kids and what didn’t. As author Paulo Coelho says, “The secret of life is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”4 We have certainly done that with our own children.

No doubt that if you found this book, there are certain things you already do very well, while other things can be improved. As lifelong learners, we all seek ways to add to our skill set and expand our levels of effectiveness. Like everyone involved in sports parenting, you probably have times when you feel stagnant or stuck. That’s when this book can be your companion along the way to optimize your chances of being a champion sports parent. Your mistakes serve as your invisible teachers, giving you the gift of wisdom. These setbacks guide you along the path of being a more effective parent helping your children to experience a better relationship with their passion.

We all love our sports kids, yet we also are aware of how we can lose touch with what may be best for our prized athletes. It’s easy to impose our needs upon them rather than listen to what they want in order to better understand their personal struggles. This book will help you to be better listeners and, as a result, be more respectful and sensitive to their needs—which is how we gain their loyalty, cooperation, love, and appreciation. And this is the only way they will reach their full capacity as athletes and human beings.

Additionally, this book presents a plethora of specific behaviors, characteristics, and attributes that contribute to a healthy, beautifully choreographed dance between parent, child, and coach, one that will preserve the dreams and goals of the child while at the same time help them realize validation, self-reliance, confidence, empowerment, respect, caring, love, and self-actualization. Raise your hand if you don’t desire to help your child develop these traits and values. The beauty of athletics is the way it accelerates the process of having our children learn these traits. Athletics provides an opportunity for us as sports parents to learn lessons in a one hour event that normally would take a month, a year, or even a lifetime to absorb without sports.

This book will help you to embellish the faith you have in your child while reducing the unintentional and irrational fears they may experience, fears so common in the world of sports performance. Having faith instead of fear helps them to reduce anxiety in times of crisis. Without fear, your child feels free to step away and risk setbacks because with your help they have learned the value of failure to help them forge ahead.

Following Your Heart

Undoubtedly, you are reading this book because you are a conscious, caring, and loving parent in search of upping your sports parenting game. You want to improve your toolbox so your child can perform their very best. Knowing this, we ask that you have the courage to follow what your heart is telling you and make the changes you need to not only embellish the sports life of your child but also enhance your relationship with them and improve the overall joy in your life. When you do have this courage, magic happens as your children begin to embrace the notion that they can be something other than ordinary.

Know that this sports parenting journey will take some dedication and mindful work. In the words of the iconic Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “A new philosophy, a new way of life, is not given for nothing. It’s acquired with much patience and great effort.” Start slowly with small, gradual, incremental steps, and soon you will experience pleasant rewards of progress and exciting positive change over the entire course of your lives. It is a day-to-day process, up and down, forward and back as you continually improve and blossom as sports parents and as good people.

Sports parenting is a delicate balance. It is the art of selflessly serving your children through firm yet kind, gently worded directives that will give your kids a sense of self-worth. Your children will, as a result, be more productive in their sports experience and loyal to you and your service toward them. We know that kindness and service to others creates a spirit of loyalty. It is necessary, however, that you are firm in addition to being selfless and encouraging toward those you guide. There’s no need ever to push, force, coerce, or manipulate your children—or anyone else, for that matter.

How to Use This Book

Much like our last book together, The Champion Teammate, the book in your hands has been compiled through wisdom gathered through extensive research and writing, involvement with more than 100 championship teams, consultancies with Hall of Fame coaches, nearly 400 interviews on our Way of Champions Podcast, and hundreds of clinics and conferences we conduct on the subject of being an exceptional parent, coach, and teammate .The material here has been gathered from numerous authors, sport scientists, psychologists, and coaches with extensive backgrounds working with parents and children in sports. We share stories of world-famous athletes and teams who epitomize each lesson, as well as wisdom garnered from Native American tradition, Eastern wisdom, Christian mysticism, Latin American cultures, and Western psychology.

The book is broken into four parts, and within each part are a series of lessons and ideas that you can use to be a champion sports parent. The four parts are:

PART I: To Be a Better Parent, Be a Better You
PART II: Teaching Your Child the Inner Game
PART III: Coaches Are Your Allies, Not Your Adversaries

PART IV: Modeling Champion Parent Behaviors

At the end of each section, you will find a quote that will be relevant to that chapter’s content. Where relevant and important, we also include an affirmation or two that serve as verbal reinforcers of the message in that section. Every chapter will conclude, finally, with a series of questions and/or activities to promote some thought on your part and discussions with your young athletes. We encourage you to record some of your answers and thoughts so you can return back to this guidebook time and again.

In Part I: To Be a Better Parent, Be a Better You, we look first at ourselves as parents. What is motivating our thoughts and actions? Why do we feel excessive pressure to keep up with the Joneses and allow our actions to be guided by FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)?We then discuss how things such as a servant mindset, gratitude, using the RIVER acro- nym, and embracing both the good and bad on this journey will help you provide a more consistent foundation for your athletic children.

In Part II, we take a deep dive into the inner game. While we are always seeking out newer fancy equipment, technical trainers, and someone to help our kids get physically stronger and faster, we rarely go inside and improve those four inches between the ears. This is the area that can provide huge advantages to athletes who treat the brain as a muscle and learn how to make it stronger, faster, and clearer. You will learn about visualization and mindfulness, how to turn failure into fuel, and the importance of courage when confidence may be lacking.

In Part III, we delve into the coach-parent relationship. Coaches must be our allies, not our adversaries, and if we work on building trust and understanding, and follow some specific guidelines, we can have a great relationship with our coaches that is beneficial to us and our athletes. You will learn how to both know and embrace your role, effectively communicate, help your coach understand your child, when to let go during difficult situations, and when to intervene in dangerous ones.

Finally, in Part IV, we get into modeling champion behaviors on competition days. There are specific things we should and should not do pre-competition, during competition, and post-competition. Adhering to these items will give your child the best mindset to perform before and during the game and create a safe place for them to unwind after it. Ignore them, and you potentially set your child up for failure during their event and misery on the ride home.

Being a Champion Sports Parent

With an open heart and mind, we ask that you embrace this “new” approach of BEING a champion sports parent. Know that you do not BECOME a champion sports parent. You choose to BE one by implementing the behaviors, strategies, observations, tools, and time-honored suggestions we propose in this book. There are no outcomes or results to measure your progress. Progress is accrued intuitively in this very moment measured by your intentions, your purpose, and your desire to make a positive difference in the lives of your children and the kids of other parents. Progress is measured by the smile on your child’s face. Progress is measured by the joy experienced before, during, and after the event. Progress is measured by the everyday elevated feelings you and your child experience because sports has now become the way you create family fun, happiness, and value in life. All this is valid, anecdotal data. It’s a way of living that feels extraordinary. This is what it means to BE a champion sports parent.

Your First Question

Now, we encourage you to take your first step. Take a few moments and answer this question:

What is the purpose of sports for my child/children?

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Knowing why you put your children in sports is critical. Is it to win championships and trophies? Is it to build memories? Is it to reinforce the values and lessons you teach at home, as well as learn to experience adversity, do hard things, and become an active and healthy adult? Only you can answer this question, so give it some time. Come back to it. Because for many people, the sports industrial complex and environment of youth sports pushes children away from the original purpose of sport.

Once you have recorded your answer, dive into the book. Begin to read and implement what you have learned immediately. With renewed enthusiasm, celebrate your youngsters and their athletic experience in the spirit of playfulness. Let sports awaken you to the awesome positive exchange between you and your young stars, this soulful dance of conscious sports parenting. The poet Rumi mentions that “when you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” We love sports, but what really fills our hearts is knowing that a positive sports experience can inspire and empower your child more than any other experience in life.

The post The Dance of Sports Parenting appeared first on Changing the Game Project.

This past week was both a happy and a sad one for me. I just returned from New York, where my family and I hosted a celebration of life for my mom Kathleen, who passed away in April (I wrote about her being my #1 fan here). We held a public celebration of life in my hometown of Port Jefferson, NY, and then our family and cousins travelled to a shared family cabin in Connecticut to scatter her ashes next to her parents and celebrate with our own laughs, tears, and stories of her life. And as I sat though both celebrations, I was consistently reminded by those who knew my mom best of something I say each an every week on our podcast, but often struggle to remember:

“Your influence is never neutral.”

The number of people who stood up and told stories about how my mom was one of the most important people in their lives was astounding. They told stories about how she helped them when they were a starving, lonely university student, or a person just trying to get ahead in life. Many of them told of meeting my mom on a random occasion, when she reached out and was determined to learn something fascinating about a person that day, and they just happened to cross her path. Friends shared stories of being taught by her to drive, or start a business, or raise money for a great cause in our town. One man told us how my mom taught him to drive, helped him leave his job washing dishes in a Chinese restaurant, buy his first  truck, and eventually start a national shipping business. We even had a foreign exchange student from Spain, whom lived with us when she was 16, fly in from Barcelona because of the influence my mom had on her 40 years ago. The stories went on and on. Yet there was one common theme.

My mom seemed to appear when they needed someone the most. She had a knack of being there at the right time to help them get ahead. She had a knack of making them feel valued, important, and relevant when they did not feel that way. And she realized that her influence was never neutral.

My mom was their greatest coach.

I realized last week that everything I needed to know about coaching, relationships and influence I had learned from my mom, day in and day out, as I watched her invest in people and give selflessly to people whom had little to offer in return except gratitude. I realized how easily we are swayed to connect with those who have the talent, the money, the prestige to get ourselves ahead, when in reality if we all just helped the next one in line regardless of what they could potentially do for us, the world would be a much better place.

I hope more coaches realize the influence they have to change lives, to build people up, to help them overcome adversity and build confidence. I hope we all take a moment this week to pause, and reflect on our influence on others in our busy lives. That we reach out to one person, or connect with one stranger on the street or in the coffee shop and find out something fascinating about them. I hope we all become a little more intentional about using our influence for good.

Our influence is never neutral. Every single time we interact with others we leave a positive or negative mark on their lives. The more aware if our influence we are, the more powerful it is. And as parents and coaches, we have the opportunity to influence so many young minds and hearts if we are aware how powerful our influence is.

And when we all pass, the people there to celebrate us will not talk about our money or possessions or trophies or statues erected in our honor. They will talk about our influence.

Your influence is a gift you have been given. Use it wisely. Just like my mom did.

The post Your Influence is Never Neutral appeared first on Changing the Game Project.

The other day I had a conversation with a therapist and youth sports advocate who is doing some great work in building greater connection between coaches, athletes and parents. Our conversation led us to discuss why so many kids that he sees in his practice are put under so much pressure in sports, often by well intentioned parents and coaches. It reminded me of an article I published back in 2014, and have rewritten here today. 

What happens to us parents and coaches that turns us from sensible, relaxed people to stressed out adults roaming up and down sports sidelines and screaming at every play?

It is a question I pondered a lot, especially as I watched my own children’s games during their formative years, played side by side with “competitive” youth soccer games. The parents on our sideline look next door and ask me “what is going on over there, why are they freaking out?”

At that time, now over 10 years ago, I discussed this question with my long time friend Paul, the father of 2 college-age athletes. We discussed what makes youth sports tip (the word used by Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point) from a relaxed, child centered environment to the ultra-competitive, win at all costs one we see far too often these days. This environment contributes a great deal to the 70% dropout rate in youth sports by age 13, yet it persists, and continues to expand. Paul had some interesting insight.

“It is the balance of patience and expectations,” he said. “When our kids start off in sports, we have loads of patience, we know they will make mistakes, and that’s OK. Our expectation for them to be successful at something they have just started doing is very low, so we don’t get too worked up when they make errors, or when they lose. But that doesn’t last long.

I believe Paul hit the nail on the head. As parents begin to invest more time and money in youth sports, very quickly their patience for development begins to dwindle, often faster than it should. They see 11 year olds on ESPN and worry that their kid is falling behind, or go into panic mode when their team loses a few games.

They forget that development is not a sprint; it’s a marathon.

At the same time, we see adult expectations rise too fast. We want instant success, abundant victories, and perfection on every play. We want focus on long-term goals, instead of the moment. We forget that these are not mini-adults; they are kids. They do not value the same things we do, nor should they.

Pretty soon, we reach the youth sports tipping point, where all of a sudden our expectations for our children’s success and playing ability surpasses our patience and understanding of development. We reach a tipping point, as shown by the image below. That’s when it all starts to get a little nutty.

Sadly, I see this tipping point moving younger and younger. Parents are enrolling their kids in all star programs and high-cost travel teams in 2nd or 3rd grade. We have cuts being made at age 7 or 8, and youth sports organizations promising more competitive training, more tournaments, higher level games, and better outcomes if you just enroll the child in this year round program as soon as possible. We are told to pay more money, invest more time, and expect more results.

But no one asked the kids if this is what they want. Sure, they like competitive games, but they want to also play with their friends. Sure travel is fun, but every weekend? Yes, they understand they need to practice, but it still MUST BE FUN. Yes, they want to win, but they still want the freedom to be creative, explore, try new things, and yes, even make mistakes!

They never said they wanted to stop playing sports and turn it into a job!

Across many youth sports, I see the tipping point often reached by age 10 or 11. The fees have been high for a few years. The team is told it needs better results to get into more prestigious events and leagues. Soon, youth sports tips from being a child-driven, child-focused activity to an adultified version of kids’ games that is outcome driven, and focused upon practice instead of play, and results instead of development.

Our patience is gone!

As a result, parents worry more about every loss or bad game. Coaches worry that kids will jump ship to the team that won. The adults on the sideline get anxious over results, angry with officials, and stressed out when their “investment” is not paying off. Expectations are sky high, patience is low, and we reach the tipping point.

Everything changes. Well, almost everything.

The one thing that has not changed at the tipping point is the fact that the athletes are still only kids. They are kids who want to play, and not sit the bench because of some misplaced emphasis on winning. They are kids who want to enjoy themselves, and have the games belong to them, and not the adults who incessantly yell, scream and micromanage every play. They are kids who want to learn, and not fear getting yelled at and criticized for every mistake. They are kids who have not yet grown, or are growing and trying to figure out how to move in their new body. Some of them are even kids who care more about the post game snack than the result! We have lost patience with them too!

If we want to take some of the madness out of youth sports we must rebalance patience and expectations. We must maintain a high level of patience, and keep our expectations in check. In fact, perhaps our patience should never go below our expectations. That should only happen in the hearts and minds of our kids. When they expect more than they can give, and they no longer have the patience and persistence to keep plugging away, perhaps they will step away. But it should be their decision.

We need all the adults involved in youth sports to take a stand on behalf of our kids, and we can do this by keeping patience and expectations in their proper perspective. Here are three ways to make this happen:

1. Have patience for the process:

Paying more money does not change the fact that talent development is a long drawn out process. You cannot buy success and you cannot take a shortcut, nor should you!

Think about it this way; do you want your child to win every single game they play this season? That can be arranged. Just play against inferior teams, in a lower league, or against younger and less experienced kids, and voila, undefeated!

But why? The competition is not good, the players will not be challenged, improve as quickly, and will eventually get bored. Winning all their games or matches is NOT CONDUCIVE to developing an athlete for the long term. They need challenge, failure, tight losses, tight wins, some easy games, some difficult ones, but always they need a carrot dangled ahead that says, “good, now do this.”

So if we can agree that winning all games from here to eternity is not a good thing, then why do we get so freaked out when we lose a few? Why do we lose patience when our kids have a bad game, or a bad week, or a bad month? This is not only supposed to happen, it is a great thing when it happens! Embrace this!

2. Have high expectations for the right things

Instead of expecting instant development, abundant wins, and flawless performances from our kids, how about we start expecting a few things that sports should be delivering, namely coaches who are positive role models and organizations that emphasize character, good values, proper long term athletic development, and put winning in its rightful place!

I am consistently amazed that well-intentioned adults put their kids with “winning” coaches that treat their children poorly, do not display any positive character traits, and do not act in a way that they would ever allow their child to act. Bad sportsmanship, poor role models and trying to shortcut player development are things we should have little patience for, but often I see parents turning their backs on this type of behavior if the team wins.

Parents should expect more character development and positive life lessons from their coaches and sports organizations, because they are capable of delivering those in abundance. If your coach tells you that is not his or her job, run, and run fast. That is not the type of coach you want for your child. Far too many coaches simply choose not to teach character through sport because it is hard, and hide behind the façade of “developing winners” and being in the “pre-super elite league.” It is total BS they are feeding parents, and if parents start focusing and expecting the right things, coaches will start delivering.

3. After every event, always ask “What’s good about this?”

Whether your child’s team wins or loses, ask “why is this a good thing, what did we learn?” If your child makes a mistake, or misses the game winning shot, there is a laundry list of items that can be positive about that experience if you help them frame it correctly. When you start finding the good, you start lowering your expectations of perfection and your fear of the bad. When you start finding the good, you will feel your patience rising and stress level dropping.

Most importantly, when you start finding the good in every situation, and help your child do the same, you develop your child’s character, grit, persistence, integrity, gratitude, and more. You reduce fear of failure. You build confidence. And you make your child optimistic, one of the greatest gifts you can give a child, and one of the characteristics of the world’s best athletes.

It’s high time to demand more of the right things (values, role models, character, and development on and off the field), and less of the wrong ones (immediate linear development and weekly success). It’s time for more patience, and tempered expectations.

Let’s push that tipping point much further down the road, and keep our sidelines behaving in a way that actually helps, instead of hurts our children’s development and love of sports.

In fact, why not get rid of that tipping point all together. If we do that, it will keep more kids in sports. It will develop more athletes who perform better and enjoy themselves while playing. It will reduce our stress level as parent and coaches. And it will return youth sports to its rightful owners, the youth!

Now that’s an idea that needs to tip!

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I recently spent a few days with some NCAA Division I programs I have worked with the past couple of years. Both programs have been very successful on the field, winning conference championships and achieving high national rankings and recognition. Both programs also want to keep pushing to the next level, to compete for national championships, as well as emulate their past successes. And this creates an interesting scenario.

On my most recent trip I asked one of the teams to individually write down how society judged their success. I had asked this question in the past and was reminded of it by Brett Ledbetter in his new book Question Based Leadership: A Playbook for Leadership Conversations. Whether it be their classmates, their parents, media, or the general public, how did outsiders to the program judge their success. The most common answers were:

• Winning
• Championships
• Individual awards
• Goals and assists/individual stats
• Public attention/social media followers

I then asked them to write down what’s most important to them in their lives, what brings the greatest fulfillment in their everyday pursuits. The most common answers:

• Family
• Friends and teammates
• Health
• Being successful/winning
• Religion/spirituality
• My dog!!!

When we put these side by side we can see the issues. The external pressures and the way society judge athletic success are far apart from what brings us joy and fulfillment in life. Now, that is not to say in any way that college teams do not want to try and win championships and have success in the win and loss column, or that players should not strive for individual and team recognition. It’s just that if that is your sole focus you end up feeling empty. Even if you win, it can be hollow. If you spend your time worrying about and trying to change other peoples opinions about you, you are focusing on something that is uncontrollable. It can wreck your confidence, and bring a great deal of stress and anxiety into competition.

Worse, the pursuit of the things that matter to society at large can promote selfishness, whereas great teams are dominated by selflessness. Pretty soon teams can be fractured, and dominated by the attitude of “I’m going to get my points/assists/awards/recognition, to hell with the team.” Society’s scorecard actually brings athletes farther away from what they just listed as valuing the most.

On the professional and collegiate level, and even on the high school varsity level, results matter to varying degrees. Coaches have to show results to keep their jobs, and competitive athletes want to win. But if you win by forsaking what you value most, it is never fulfilling. Sadly I see this focus on the societal scorecard becoming more and more prevalent on the youth level. 10 and under teams worried about national rankings. All star teams and cuts happing at younger and younger ages. How often does “did you win” just pop out of our mouths when we see our kids at the end of a youth game? I see walk up songs for tee-ball players going viral on Instagram. And when I speak to college coaches about the athletes they are recruiting, do you know what they all say?

“We have to teach them that everything they and their parents were taught to value regarding stats, points, all star recognition and the like don’t matter anymore, You have to be part of this family, You have to be selfless. You have to learn to give, not get.” Our youth sports focus on the societal scorecard in not preparing our kids for the next level. It is inhibiting them.

In a great recent article about Iowa basketball star Caitlin Clark, author Wright Thompson discusses how her competitiveness and quest for excellence and acknowledgement led to lots of handwaving, anger and frustration with teammates.

“She’d trapped herself in a perpetual state of chasing, where achievements brought no peace. Her coaches and mentors helped her see the lie in those dreams. The numbers, great as they were, fun as they have been to chase, weren’t speaking to her soul, weren’t why she played,” writes Thompson. The attention and the awards were dragging her away from making the type of memories that matter most, those with friends and families.

“That’s not going to make me feel full at the end of the day,” said Clark. “In 20 years, banners and rings just collect dust. It’s more the memories.”

Caitlin and her Iowa teammates settled on a mantra: “Find peace in the quest.” And this is what we all must do. teach our kids to embrace the process. Find joy and fulfillment in the journey of improvement and excellence. Win each day, and link as many of those days together as possible. Be a great teammate, and teach others to do the same. Focus on what fulfills you, and not what society tells you to value. This was my message to the college team I was working with on their quest to become a national champion. Have high standards, and compete like crazy. But don’t lose sight of what matters most.

That is the path to a transformational sports experience for parents, coaches and most importantly, our kids. Good luck.

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“But coach, I am working hard out there,” many of us have heard often as a coach.

“Yes Dad/Mom, I am trying my best” sounds familiar to many a parent.

We all want our athletes to work hard and apply themselves in training and games. But is something more needed to truly excel? Is working hard enough to reach for an athlete to reach his/her potential? I don’t believe it is, as one ingredient, when added to hard work, takes an athlete to the next level.

Do they COMPETE?

In this brilliant video below, Duke Women’s Basketball coach Kara Lawson explains the difference between working hard and competing, and its a very important distinction.

As Lawson states, a coach can set up a challenging practice for her team or individuals, through workload, organization and activities. At the end of that session, an athlete may very well have worked incredibly hard to accomplish the tasks set out by the coach. BUT, in each of those activities, the coach puts a couple of players on the line to run against each other, or adds defenders to the games, there is one level above working hard, and that is the willingness to compete. The coach controls the workload designed to make one work hard, but only the athlete decides if he or she is willing to compete. And if you don’t compete, you do not improve as quickly as those who do.

We all love our athletes who compete. Even when they are skilled physically or technically, they try to win every activity, every small sided game, oftentimes even the team ping pong tournament during their down time. Every sprint is a race to be won. Every duel is a challenge to be met. Those who do not simply rely on their ability and choose to compete often excel.

On the other hand, we often meet skilled athletes who rely on that skill to coast by. They have more to give but choose not to, meeting the work load, “working hard” by traditional definition, but choosing not to compete and truly push themselves. Sure, the metrics look good, but have they won the day? have they squeezed the most juice out of the session?

Competitors are willing to suffer. They are willing to give more, fail, and go again. They go beyond working hard but allowing others to push them to new limits, and pushing their teammates to the same.

As Lawson says, she cannot force her kids to compete. It is a choice they make. And you are not supposed to be perfect every day. you just cannot have two bad days in a row if you want to be a Duke basketball player. This is great advice for all of us to give to our kids.

Don’t allow simply being a hard worker to become a habit. Be a competitor. Make competing a habit. Create an environment where competing is the standard that everyone aspires to, and make it uncomfortable to not compete. Yes, we want everyone to work hard, but we want more. We demand more.

COMPETE!

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